A thought experiment. Imagine a situation where one MP from each constituency resigns, is removed or dies….

As you know, our IMF loan case appeal will be heard on Tuesday at 2.30pm in the Court of Appeal at the Supreme Court (See here for details) I hope to see you all there but if you are unable to make it let me explain what we stand to lose.

Originally this was about a $5 billion loan pledge to the IMF. I maintained that this breached our Constitution. I still maintain that.

The President pretended that it had nothing to do with him. The MOF tried to shift the responsibility on to MAS and claim it was nothing to do with them. The President and the Government contorted themselves, hid behind semantics and arcane Latin phrases and did everything they could to evade responsibility for making this loan commitment without due process. However once it got to court it was the AG defending the government and not a private lawyer hired to defend MAS. And once in court the AG brought up something truly astounding.

As every effort so far to pull the wool over our eyes had failed and as they had been embarrassed by my discovery that the President’s office had already missed one breach of Article 144, they tried to get out of arguing the case by putting forward the argument that I had no standing. In other words, that there was no case to answer because I had no right to bring one. If I were an individual and this were a private matter that would be my loss. But I was representing every Singaporean and when the judge ruled that I had no standing he ruled that every citizen had no standing, in matters that affect us all. As blogger Andy Wong said on sgwatchdog.com (http://www.sgwatchdog.com/Appeal.html), this case is not about the IMF any more. That has become a side issue.

In fact, the High Court decided that I lacked standing because it said I could not show that I had suffered special damage and had a genuine private interest. This is what has become known as the locus standi issue. Yesterday someone pointed out to me a fascinating article in the Singapore Law Gazette by Tham Lijing (Locus Standi in Judicial Review: Two Roads Diverge in a Singapore Wood).

As the author points out this decision contradicts an earlier decision to allow standing to Madam Vellama in the case of Vellama d/o Marie Muthu v Attorney General. (It is noted that the AG did not even try to contest standing here ). For those who have not read his article, I paraphrase his argument below.

Whenever the seat of a Member, not being a non-constituency Member, has become vacant for any reason other than a dissolution of Parliament, the vacancy shall be filled by-election in the manner provided by or under any law relating to Parliamentary elections for the time being in force.

However, as Tham says, the problem is that this also involves a public rather than private right. It is difficult to see how Madam Vellama has suffered special damage by virtue of being deprived of representation in Parliament. One might say that her situation is special by virtue of her being a constituent of Hougang. But this answer cannot resolve the inherent contradiction between Vellama andJeyaretnam.

Tham gives us the hypothetical example where one MP from every constituency resigns or is removed. In this scenario, Madam Vellama would not be “personally affected” vis-à-vis other Singaporeans. The rights of residents of all constituencies would have been equally affected. Therefore, a strict application of the “personal interest” criterion would deprive Madam Vellama of standing in this imaginary situation. This exposes the contradiction between the two decisions since how can it be that enforceability of the right to representation in Parliament depends on an irrelevant factor such as the number of by-elections involved.

This piece of judicial logic suggests, as Tham goes on to say, that had MAS offered the IMF loan out of funds that were supposed to be spent on upgrading projects in Hougang, that a Hougang resident should have been able to bring an action as she would be “personally affected” compared to Singaporeans in other constituencies. So that Hougang resident would have had standing but not me (Never mind that I do have a personal interest as a taxpayer, CPF holder and presumably a stakeholder in Temasek and GIC in preventing the government from giving away our reserves). Yet we would both be seeking essentially the same thing, viz. to enforce Article 144 of the Constitution.

To illustrate this consider a situation where a future Prime Minister gets the President to dissolve Parliament and then decides not to call elections within three months as required under Article 66 of the Constitution. Instead he decides to rule by decree indefinitely citing reasons of national security for example. This would affect all Singaporeans equally and thus no one would be able to bring an action to force the PM to hold an election and to enforce our Constitutional rights.

Recently, in relation to the Locus standi arguments,Tan Wah Piow reminded us all of Thomas Jefferson’s famous quote (see here):

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government,
so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution
so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

For those of you who have not heard of him, Tan Wah Piow is a famous Singapore dissident and author of “Smokescreens and Mirrors: Tracing the Marxist Conspiracy”. He was a former student and union activist who was forced to flee and seek asylum in Britain in the 1970s. Ironically he also was a good friend of our current Finance Minister when the latter studied in the UK in the 1980s.

To return to Jefferson, he is saying is that the only way to prevent a rogue government is through the Constitution or in more general terms, the rule of law. The PAP is fond of talking of rogue governments which has become synonymous in their vocabulary with another party being elected democratically. The real danger however is not one of a rogue government (Opposition) being elected but of a future government going rogue. As Noam Chomsky always says the test of democracy is not how you vote your leaders in but how you vote them out. If we lack the ability to enforce the Constitution through the courts then we do not have a Constitution and if we do not have a Constitution then we do not have a democracy.

Extending Tham’s example earlier, consider a situation where at the end of its five-year term a future Government decides to ignore the President’s attempts to dissolve Parliament and call elections within three months as required under Article 66 of the Constitution. Instead it decides to extend its term and rule by decree indefinitely citing reasons of national security or the national interest.

Many of you if not most will probably think this could never happen in Singapore. However at the time when the Hougang seat fell vacant the PM said that “there are many other issues on the national agenda right now” and noted that Singapore just had a General Election less than a year ago (see here) as a justification for not holding a by-election indefinitely. In this case no one disputed Madam Vellama’s standing to bring an action calling for a by-election and asking for a declaration that the PM did not have unfettered discretion.

If a future PM was to decide to extend his government’s term unilaterally and impose a State of Emergency on spurious grounds (rather like what happened to India under Indira Gandhi in the 1970s) this would affect all Singaporeans equally. Thus given the precedent established by Justice Tan’s decision in the IMF case, no one would be able to bring an action to force the PM to hold an election.

It is thus vital in the interests of upholding our Constitution and the rule of law that this decision be overturned on Tuesday.

I welcome your comments.

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Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism.
I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions.
The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work.
The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal.
I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore.
I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian.
I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean.
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thanks kenneth for standing up against Lee n cronies! the judges make a mockery of themselves. justice will eventually prevail when pap lose power and all the wrongs that they did come out in the open!!

Ben, I was only ever taking the govt to court over a breach of Art 144. They tied themselves up in knots and because clearly there was a breach and they brought up Locus Standi in an effort to sidestep the substantive issue. In the first case I was advised that Locus Standi would be laughed out of court and not to worry about it. Obviously it contradicted the ruling in the Vellama case which accepted that she had standing. So we were all staggered when the judge ruled in that case that I had no standing and he would comment on the substantive issue anyway just for the sake of completeness ?!!

As is now clear, I appealed both locus standi and the substantive issues on the day.
However, in a rather shocking development the AG argued that she should not have to answer my complex financial and accounting arguments as they required special accounting knowledge and were not in my lawyer’s submissions. So at this moment I do not know whether the judges will take them into consideration or not.

Legal observers could not understand why the judges did not separate the Locus standi and substantive issue. It was expected that they would hear the standing first make a decisiosn and hear the substantive issue or not.

The government will do anything to avoid having to answer on the substantive issues because they know they have no case and and look like financial illiterates. Deja vu from 1997 when Richard Hu said that making a loan to Indonesia (then insolvent) was the same as buying US Treasuries. And the current PM (then just BG) said that MAS could give a guarantee without engaging Article 144. Obviously this is my specialist area and I argued long and hard but it may have all been to no avail and we citizens may also lose our last avenue of appeal as a result of the AG bring locus standi into play.

How come Singapore is compelled to be so generous when it comes to giving or lending money to other countries or supporting natural or man-made disasters in other countries? But when it comes to our own citizen’s welfare funding, they want us to “learn how to fish” so we can be fed for a lifetime; Where does Singapore squeeze out the money when it comes to philanthropy towards other countries? Actually, it is all the GST and other forms of taxing upon the residents of Singapore; namely the Citizens. Singapore cannot help itself but want to help others? Or more correctly, Singapore government tend to be reluctant to finance welfare for its citizens but rather prefer to mete out welfare for other countries. Does Singapore owe the other countries a living? It should be mutual dependence when it comes to affairs with other countries. Why can’t the Singapore government be more gracious towards its own Citizens? Is there value in the Singapore Pink Identity Card? Or is it we are just one of the categories of Residents in Singapore?

Thank you Matthew. Although I am not arguing that we shouldn’t be giving the money to IMF just that if we do give it we must follow the Constitution. Having said that I do point out elsewhere that the amount we are pledging is disproportionate to our size and in comparison to what other countries are giving. I haven’t argued whether Christine La Garde’s plan is a sound one financially either. However there are many our there fiercely opposed to what she is doing on the grounds that it is fundamentally flawed.

I have often maintained that we Singaporeans have voluntarily accepted the kind of austerity measures that the countries being bailed out by our money refuse to accept – even when the handout is at stake.

Then of course I have also argued, “why should La Garde and the IMF get to trample over our democratic rights to bring their plan for Europe to fruition? “They don’t care about the damage they are storing up for the future. I guess SIngapore was a soft target for them because Singaporeans can be relied on not to protest.
Our MOF was sure to pledge them a huge amount in return for the kudos and IMF brownie points.
Our people were sure to take it in silence.

In the Philippines they rioted in the streets at the amount being pledged to the IMF.